Dinner and All

I feel like it's Christmas night. We had been planning for this evening's dinner with some good friends and now that it's over, there's nothing more to plan for the time being. It was a wonderful evening though, with good food and very nice people. It is important to remember how valuable friends are. I don't mean economically valuable, but, I guess what you could call spiritually. Nice friends are good for the soul. Friendships are like plants too. If you neglect them, they will wither and die and that would be sad. I think I will resolve to at least keep in contact with friends. Sometimes it's not possible to get together with friends physically, because of distance or other circumstances, but it ought to be possible, in this day and age, to contact them by email, phone, letter, or by some means. I would not want to lose the friendship of the people that we were with today, or any friends, because of neglect on my part. These people add such a rich dimension to life, it would be foolish to let them slip away. I hope also that I, in some small way, can add to the fabric of their lives.

Friday and Haiti

It's Friday and I did my weight training exercises today. Will I keep this up? I'm doing exercises for muscle endurance, not muscle size. There is a difference and I think endurance is what I want. Especially, I want to be able to get out of my kayak in the warmer weather without looking like a beached whale. I can get in it just fine, but after sitting for an hour or so, uncurling myself to get out has presented some moments in the past. I have always managed to get out, but not always as gracefully as I would have hoped.

Peter is back living in his office from a couple of days of R&R in Santo Domingo. His tour in Haiti ends in August. His Spanish language training starts in January in DC, so in addition to leave time and vacation, he needs to work someplace for a couple of months before he goes to Mexico. He has asked for Miami. I think the government should give that to him after all that he has had to endure in Haiti. He didn't sign on for earthquake duty or to see his neighborhood crumble around him. So, we'll see what happens.

We had a little snow yesterday, but it wasn't real cold. so it melted. I hope we don't get anymore for the weekend because we are having guests for dinner on Sunday and I would rather not have a major snow event to deal with before then. But, if we have a blizzard, I will go outside in the freezing cold and remove every snowflake that could impede anyone's progress to our door. That's just the way it is.

Splitting Wood

I didn't do any weight training today. I'm not slacking off. I'm only supposed to do it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I did move some dirt around the yard and I split some firewood. On Sundays in the winter I like to get a fire going in the wood stove in the cellar. This Sunday we're having company, so it seems like the perfect time to do it. I now have plenty of wood split. I do wonder about this wood or my splitting technique. These logs have been drying for a year now, but are they ever tough to split. I have employed an axe, an eight pound splitting maul and a sledge hammer and wedge. I have read that the 8lb maul may be too heavy and that it just bounces. I would think that the thing could go through a building once it gets going, but it does bounce a lot. The axe stick in the log, but the head isn't broad enough to act as a wedge. The whole process seems to be more work than it ought to be.

On an older post I mentioned that a spring had broken on a drive mechanism under my snow blower. Our neighbor, Rich, had jury rigged an additional spring to get it to work. Today I turned the thing on its side and ran some galvanized steel wire through the spring he used and through a hole in the drive cam as an extra safeguard against the thing coming out. I hope that I'm ready for any snow that may come on Saturday.

Haiti, the Dentist, Weights

Peter got a couple of days R&R in Santo Domingo from today until Wednesday. His hotel is nice, but it's a half hour from the beach and he has no car. He may try to get there tomorrow. Apparently, no one else from the embassy is there, but he met some people he knows who were providing aid work or something. Wednesday he has to go back to the cot in his office, but at least he's getting a little respite.

I had an appointment at the dentist for cleaning today, but the hygienist was sick so it got postponed until next Monday. We're having a few folks for dinner on Sunday and I wanted to look spiffy. Oh well, I'll have to be unspiffy, or just keep my mouth closed.

I restarted my weight training in ernest today. I had been reacquainting myself with some of the exercises, but today I put them all together for the first time in a while. I was glad I did it, but I discovered muscles I had forgotten existed. I think I'm supposed to do this more than once, even on a regular basis. I have these record sheets that expect you to record your progress several times a week. One curious thing is that my old sheets show that I did certain exercises with 20 lb dumbbells, but I only have 15 and then 25 lb ones. I don't know where the 20 lb ones could be. Curious.

Haiti and Peter

Peter now has a cot in his office with a blanket and pillow. He was also able to get a shower and a meal at the home of a coworker that wasn't damaged. His bodyguard went back to his house to retrieve Pete's laptop and some clothes. While he was in the house, there was an aftershock, so he got out pretty fast. Pete may get a two day break in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, but that probably includes coming and going. Hardly a big break. Why those two places? Apparently. that because that's where the military planes fly. I guess U.S. Military planes don't fly to Miami, or maybe because there is no air marshall to fly along. Think that's far fetched?

When Teddy was on protective detail for the Vice President, he would act as an air marshall whenever he was flying to or from an assignment. He would speak to the pilot ahead of time and the crew would know where he was seated. One time he was returning from Wyoming with about 40 other armed Secret Service agents. They had left their cars at one Washington area airport (maybe it was Reagan, maybe a military base, I forget which), but they weren't allowed to fly into the airport where their cars were parked because there was no air marshall aboard. They landed at the other airport and were bussed back to their cars. That's your government at work folks.

Communications with Peter is still an iffy situation. Sometimes he can get a call through to Roxanne, sometimes not. She has the same problem when trying to call him.

Haiti, Africa, Peter, Leo

I finally communicated directly with Peter last night by email to his government email account. I don't like to do that because I know he is okay, but busy and there is not much more than the obvious that we can say to each other. He was answering at 9:00 p.m., so that was a pretty good indication of where he was at that hour since I believe his laptop is still in what remains of his house. He is still very, very busy and promises to write more when things let up a little.

In another twist, I learned that our youngest son, Leo, has volunteered to go to Haiti. The Immigration Service had requested volunteers and Leo put his name on the list. He already has all the shots he would need and is cross trained in adoption and other necessary paperwork. Peter said it would be great if he came, but that decision would have to come from Leo's headquarters office. Peter will speak to the people he knows in Haiti.

The reason that Leo has all of his shots is that this Wednesday (yesterday) he was scheduled to deport an illegal criminal back to Africa. This is part of what he does as part of his job as an ICE agent. He was already on the plane with the person at Kennedy airport, but the man was being uncooperative, resisting and refusing to sit. Since this was a commercial airliner, other passengers were starting to get nervous. After discussions with the crew and pilot, it was decided to abort the trip (of the man, not the plane). Leo said that the man will still be deported, but either sedated or put on a special deportation flight. Leo wasn't all that keen on traveling to Africa anyway. He would have been staying at a five star hotel, but not long enough to even see any sights. That is usually the case when he goes abroad (usually two agents go together). Mostly the return flight is the next available flight and if he wants to see anything he has to use vacation time and then he's usually there by himself, so depending where he is going, it's usually not that much fun. On one of his first trips (I think it was to Sarajevo, not sure) he and his partner decided ahead of time to take the following morning flight home, when they could have taken one within a couple of hours or so of arriving. When they turned over their prisoner, the local police were incredulous that they would do that. "Why would you want to stay here any longer than necessary? There is nothing here to see." Which turned out to be true.

I have a concern about other family members wanting to go to Haiti. I certainly admire the courage and volunteer spirit, but I would feel uncomfortable if it should become a trend. Someone may remember that I got a Bob the Builder outfit as a retirement gift and may feel that with extra time on my hands, I too should head to Haiti. I don't know. My French is very rusty and I don't speak Creole.

Haiti - One Week Later

Not much has changed for Peter in one week. He is still sleeping and living in the Embassy and overwhelmed with work. He hasn't heard about any relief for himself or his coworkers. He told Roxanne that when the quake struck and he was at home, all of a sudden, things fell off shelves and his china cabinet came crashing down with glass flying everywhere. He ran out of the house not knowing what was happening. He says that this has changed his outlook on life and toward people.

Crisfield, MD

With all of the activity related to the earthquakes in Haiti, I have been remiss in writing about our trip to Crisfield, MD on January 13th. Right before we left, we heard that Pete had sent a text message that he was okay. Our trip was much more relaxed after that. I can only imagine what parents of missing college students and others are going through when they have no idea what condition their children are in.

Crisfield is at the very southern tip of Maryland's Eastern Shore, on Tangier Sound, right above Virginia. It is an old oyster fishing town that has seen better days. We went there to get my new banjo. They would have shipped it to me but I wanted to go and I wanted Anne to meet Pat and Patrick Costello and Pat's wife Trudy. Anne wasn't all that excited about the five hour ride down and the five hour ride back, but I think she had a good time. We had a nice dinner with the Costellos. Anne and Trudy discussed quilts and sewing and such stuff, while Pat, Patrick and I talked about some of the finer points of the music business. The Costellos facilitate the construction of the Somerset line of banjos, which are very high quality at reasonable prices. The neck for my banjo was made by Neil Turner in Buzzard Mountain, Georgia, sent to Chris Via in Rich Creek, Virginia and then Chris builds the tone ring and pot, finishes the neck and puts it all together.

Since it is a five hour drive down there, we stayed over night at a bed and breakfast. The place was okay, but not quite up to our bed and breakfast standards. The couple that owned the place were very nice indeed, but the house needed some renovations which they were slowly making. The breakfast was fine, but Anne pointed out, that since we were the only guests in residence, we could have been given a choice of what to eat.

A long drive to get something that the UPS man would have been happy to deliver at a fraction of the cost of the trip and overnight, but, these are good people and I want to stay connected with them. Actually, the UPS man did get in on the act because Chris forgot to send the case with the banjo so he sent that directly to me and it arrived on Friday, the day after we got home.

If you ever find yourself in Crisfield, why that would be I don't know, but if you do, you should visit the Blue Crab Cafe near the municipal harbor which is owned by the same people that own the B&B. Therein you will find a relic of history, or so the legend goes. The proprietor's great, great grandmother and grandfather ran a hotel in the 1860s, in Washington, D.C. where the National Archives now stands. One day when Grandma was scrubbing the floor, a man came in and she asked him to remove his spurs and boots because he was getting the floor dirty. He said he had only come in for a drink and went to the bar. Grandma then told Grandpa to get him out of there, so he asked him to leave. Indignantly, the man left and went up the road to a hotel run by Mary Elizabeth Surratt. History buffs may recall that Mary's claim to fame was to have been hung by the neck until she was dead for participating in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The gentleman with the dirty boots was said to have been John Wilkes Booth. Could it be that if he was allowed to stay in Grandma's hotel, her fate might have been that of Mary's? Anyway, the brass foot railing upon which the same John Wilkes Booth rested his dirty boots is now in the Blue Crab Cafe in Crisfield, MD. Oh, also, the last lynching in the country supposedly took place in Crisfield. Who knew? Now you know. I should charge for this blog with all of the information that I dispense here.

Ears

Roxana didn't get a call from Pete yesterday, but did get an email that he has been very busy and just didn't have the time to call. He will try to call her tonight.

I was having trouble with my hearing and with my left ear especially, so when we visited my cousin Bill and his wife Joan, Bill had a solution. He had been having the same problem, so he got these small ear probes from Walmart and he gave me a couple of them saying they really worked for him. I tried them, but my hearing was getting so bad I could barely hear out of my left ear. I finally decided to go to the doctor who cleaned out both ears. It turns out that Bill also wound up at his doctor for the very same thing. The doctor told him that he should continue to get those little probes and give them to his friends. They will then push the wax so far into their ears that they won't be able to hear and they will come to him and he will have a lot more business. I told my cousin that I will never take any suppositories from him.

Haiti2

I couldn't edit the prior post to add any additional word for some reason, so I decided to do a new post, although there are no words that I can add to what Peter so eloquently said.

I never thought I would have sons that would be so involved in something like this situation. Peter was there on the ground from the beginning and the enormity of this tragedy will haunt him forever. We were at Katie Rose's 13th birthday party this evening and Teddy was there texting and on the phone arranging assignments of Secret Service personnel for Bill Clinton's departure from Newark to Haiti.

You never stop being concerned for your children, even when they become adults and have families of their own. Now there are not only children to be concerned about, but spouses and children. I'm not "worried" about any of them because they are all responsible, caring people (Tyler is only a baby, but he will be responsible and caring. Timmy and Bridget are almost five, so they are getting to be big kids.), but I will always be concerned for them.

Haiti

We haven't heard anything new at this point from Peter, except his Facebook posting.

Pete Kolshorn I want to thank my family, friends, co-workers and DS Brotherhood for all of your wishes of support this week. It means a lot to me. It has been horrific, heartbreaking and unimaginable. To all of my Haitian friends...the human spirit that comes through in a tragedy such as this defies words. You are strong!

Haiti / Tijuana

This is a summary of what we have learned so far from our son, Peter, who is the Deputy Regional Security Officer at the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

When the earthquake struck, he was in his house which is two blocks up the hill from the Montana Hotel which has been featured on the news because of the rescue of several people from its collapse. He wisely ran outside in only shorts and sandals, but then went back in to get some shoes. Three other houses around his had collapsed or fallen over the cliff. This is a better area where diplomats and more well-to-do people live. A doctor lived in the house next to his. Pete has a private swimming pool behind his house, but they are all situated on a cliff. He saw that a house two doors away from him had collapsed and he knew some embassy employees lived there, six people in all. He spent six hours helping to dig them out of the debris. Five survived. He also came upon a woman trapped in rubble. A military person who was there said that it was too dangerous to try to rescue her because the whole area was in danger of collapse and he left. Pete and a Haitian guard decided to try anyway and they were able to free her. Somehow he managed to get to the embassy and eventually get a text message to Roxana that he was ok. This was followed by email messages and finally phone calls when he was able to talk to the boys also.

He went back to where his house is remarkably still standing. He didn't go in because he felt it was unsafe. He has been going out on various missions and has had little sleep and what he has had has been on the chair in his office. He is eating military rations. His boss said that he doesn't know how long they can keep this up with so little sleep. Many Americans are now camped out at the embassy (Peter estimates about 600 people), which doesn't have any facilities for so many people. There are only three bathrooms.

On a positive note, Pete got a call from the State Department that his next assignment would be Tijuana, Mexico. That was one of the places on his request list. Not his top choice, but not the worst either. The boys will go to school in San Diego, right over the border. He will have to go to Washington for up to six months of language training and they will have to decide whether Roxana will stay in Florida so that the boys can stay in the same school, or uproot them to three different schools for the transition period. Ten year old Anthony would rather go to three schools so that they can all be together. He has been rather afraid for his father, although he doesn't show much emotion. He has been watching all of this tragedy unfold on TV and has confessed to having some nightmares.

The State Department asked if there was anything they could do for him now and Peter said, "Yes, send me to Barbados." That was another place on his list. I guess they didn't want to do that.

Pete told Roxana that he will try to call us today or tomorrow. We are very proud of what he is doing, but are still concerned for his safety. We ask for everyone's prayers for him and for this unbelievable tragedy in Haiti. I will post updates as more information becomes available.

Books

I was looking for a book this afternoon. It is Dean Ornish's Program fro Reversing Heart Disease. I wasn't looking for it in the book store or online. I was looking for it in the many shelves, nooks and crannies in our own house, because I knew it was somewhere. I eventually found it and I also found, or, should I say re-found books on many subjects. To name a few: law, sailing, kayaking, canoeing, walking, camping, navigation, fly fishing, surf fishing, fresh water fishing, photography, water color painting, oil painting, travel, health, cooking, herbs, gardening, fitness, exercising, weight training, literature of all kinds, music theory, piano books, banjo books, mandolin books, song books, scuba diving, biographies, field guides on various subjects, woodworking, model trains, dollhouses, books on learning Spanish, French, German, Italian, Arabic and Turkish and the list goes on. Yes, I have looked at most of them and read quite a few of them. No I can't speak any language very well, including English, but I can speak a word or two in all of them. No I can't identify all the herbs, plants, flowers and bugs described in the field guides, but I'm pretty sure I can point out a field if one presents itself.

I did scuba diving and sailing for a while and fishing, still do kayaking and canoeing and still play the banjo, but I'm hardly the expert in any of these pursuits that having all of these books would imply. Anne tells me that I should stop buying books and go to the library, but I noticed that a fair number of books were on subjects of unique interest to her. I'm not buying many books any more and I have resolved that I ought to read or re-read the ones that I have. After all, I've forgotten most of what I read anyway, so they will be like entirely new books to me. I guess I should settle down with a dram of Scotch and start reading.

It's Complicated or Why are all these People here?

Tuesday night is movie night for us, free movie night, because we have the Optimum Triple Play. We discovered that since I'm now retired, we can go to the late afternoon show instead of the evening. Today we went to the 4:15 show of It's Complicated starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. It seems like anything that Meryl Streep is in is good and this was no exception. It was funny; even I laughed and when was the last time I laughed in a movie. But, why were all those people at the theater at 4:15 on a Tuesday afternoon? There were no kids because it was an "R" rated movie. There were a fair share of geezers, but also a lot of other people that are still working age or should have been home taking care of kids. The theater was packed. We got there a little before 4:00 and the 7:00p.m. show was already sold out. It was a good movie. The actors were real people, not computer generated, there was no nudity (darn), no violence and no foul language. The theme, however, was adultery, which is probably why it had the "R" rating. Go see it and have a few laughs.

New Year's Weekend 2010 / Annie

This was a busy weekend. On Friday, Chris, Adrian, Katie Rose & Stephen, Teddy, Patti, Bridget & Timmy, Leo, Kristen & Tyler came to our house to celebrate the new year. It was nice to have three out of four families together. On Saturday we all traveled to Chip & Shannon Maruca's house in Hainesport to celebrate our annual New Year's gathering with Rocky Maruca, Betty & Ray Wheeler, Maria (Maruca) Brown, Tracy (Maruca) and John Schoene and loads of grandkids and even more food. Rocky & Jackie, Betty & Ray and Anne & I started this tradition in 1976 and have continued it ever since. It was a real nice time and I know Jackie was there in spirit also.

Sunday, today, Anne & I went to the Forum Theater in Metuchen to watch the musical Annie, in which Katie Rose had several parts. The cast was mostly children, but there were a number of professional actors and actresses as well. It was very well done and a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. It is always amazing to me how much talent ordinary people have, both kids and adults. I wish I had some of it, because it looks like a lot of fun.